Road Less Traveled
by Aneta
Summary: An example of the hope two souls can find in one another. Post Blye, K., Part Two. Implied Kensi/Deeks.


**An experiment in dialogue and OC writing, suggestions for improvement are welcome! **

**Thank you to everyone who has stuck by me in my long absence from writing. I do plan on finishing 'of fine lines', but cannot give you a timeline just yet!**

**Hope you enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS: Los Angeles.**

**()**

It's not often you find yourself awake this early, and it's been years since you've been to this beach. At least since your mother's funeral, you think, shifting your feet around in the sand, before your father buried himself in his work in order to avoid the stiff silence that invaded your home.

Only a few surfers are out this morning due to the relative calmness of the ocean before you, and if you close your eyes you can almost pretend that you're still twelve and that life has not decided to change the rules of the game just yet.

You have almost lost yourself to your own thought when a voice startles you.

"Beautiful morning, isn't it?" You don't exactly recall anyone joining you on this bench.

The intruder blinks back at you with a disconcerting smile.

"I come here to think," he continues, mostly to himself. "I think it's one of LA's most peaceful beaches. An oasis, if you will."

You agree, but do not say anything. You have ultimately come here to forget, rather than to remember, and mostly wish that this man would let you mourn your own shortcomings in peace. For a job that has gotten you nowhere, to a family lives on only in Christmas cards and voicemails. All these years you'd fooled yourself into thinking that this sort of half-existence was preferable, as if a rotten childhood could adequately prepare you for all of life's trials, and you are just now beginning to realize how much of a lie you have been living.

"I'm Marty Deeks." The blonde stranger says, turning towards you, waiting for the introduction to be returned.

You wonder if he knows what it is like to regret most everything you've done.

"Haley."

Even to your own ears, it sounds rough and sad, but he nods all the same.

You think of flying kites with your older brother. When he'd pick you up and place you on his shoulders just so you could feel like you were flying too, and how you'd shriek with joy when he began to spin in circles, tangling you both up in the string. When you'd eat ice cream for dinner and fall asleep on the way home, tucked away in the crook of his neck while your parents whispered to one another in the front seat.

And then you think of watching him wither away in a hospital bed. _Don't be angry Haley, _he'd say, before the cancer took over, _you're stronger than that. _(This is the first time she has felt betrayed by the boy she's come to idolize. It is not, however, the first time she has felt disappointed in herself.) Because she is many things, but strong is not one of them, and she is furious at the world for taking her best friend away.

_Don't leave me, _she'd pleaded as he slipped away. _Don't leave me here alone. _

The worst thing about the death of a loved one is that it takes a part of you with it, leaving you with a jagged hole in your heart where the wind can whistle through just to remind you it's still there.

The funeral had been everything he would have hated, with long speeches by relatives she'd never seen before and prayers recited to a God she was not sure she could believe in anymore. Her father stood across from her as they lowered him into the ground. They met eyes only once, as if to say_ Looks like it's just you and me now. _Except that it wasn't; they were not a team and they were never going to cross the distance between them because they were both too scared to try.

She stayed until it began to rain. (Because there's always rain. Someone she loves leaves her forever and it will pour, the whole world mocking her own sadness.)

It is the only thing she is sure of anymore.

"I almost lost my best friend yesterday," Marty Deeks breaks the silence. You wonder if it's coincidence that your two trains of thought left from nearly identical stations, but only watch as he shifts uncomfortably next to you. Mostly likely stuck in the 'what-ifs' that the word _almost _implies. His arm brushes against yours, and you can very nearly feel his exhaustion.

"What's her name?" You're surprised by your question, having been intent on leaving this discussion as a one-way street.

"Kensi." Even saying her name makes him smile, you wonder if he knows this. "The most frustratingly impossible woman I've ever met: drives me absolutely insane, _on purpose, _mind you. She'sstubborn and insistent and completely unpredictable."

His face drops suddenly. You recognize his expression as one of a person who realizes that things may never be the same.

"She almost died," Deeks murmurs, twisting his watch around his wrist.

The two of you are not so different, you decide. You suspect that he loves her and you suspect that there have been times when the ones he love have not escaped the fate that Kensi narrowly did. How odd to think that, had things tweaked themselves just a bit, Marty Deeks might be picking out tombstones and buying floral arrangements instead of sitting here, clearing his mind.

You chastise yourself for thinking that way.

_No one should have to suffer like that. _

Though you know that everyone does, eventually.

"She scares the hell out of me. Always jumping around corners and taking stupid risks and _never even thinking_ that something might happen to her and then where would I be?"

He puts his head in his hands. "Because there might have been a point where I could have moved on, but I'm not so sure anymore."

_Don't be angry,_ you want to say. But it's an unfair thing to say to someone, an impossible suggestion. _Don't be sad, don't feel guilty. Everything will be okay. _

(Really, these are all unfair things to say. Because you _will_ be sad and you _will_ feel guilty and while you will survive the pain, that does not necessarily mean that you are okay.)

He stands then, walks towards the water with his hands in his pocket. You follow him with your eyes. His shoulders are slumped forwards, as if the weight of the world has finally caught up to him and you wish now, for the first time since you watched your brother die, that you could carry someone else's burden.

"She's _Kensi,_" his voice floats back to you. You can hear the way his lips cradle her name, as if it is secret he has never shared.

Something propels you forward, and you leave the safety of the bench for the uncertainty of the sand, stumbling ever so slightly on the way over. He leans against you once you reach him and you let him, if only because it's all you can do to help, and because you know that it is not enough. And it is nice to know that you are not the only person who feels much too old, much too soon; that there are other people whose nightmares are steeped in reality and who cannot escape the fragileness of their own worlds.

You know that Marty Deeks is made up of fractured things, that he learns most lessons the hard way, that he believes Kensi can save him from the loneliness that haunts people like you.

(You think of your apartment, then. A house that is not a home, bills on the counter and no food in the pantry. Locked up in a city that you used to love, but don't anymore because you cannot forgive it. Not yet.)

"Do you love her?"

You look at him now, for the first time. He tears his own gaze away from the waves that are now crashing against the shoreline. Soon, the water will be dotted with surfboards and swimmers alike, the peace of the early morning all but a memory.

And if Marty Deeks can admit that he loves her, maybe you can admit that it's time to leave the West Coast behind. Maybe you can recover from your own self-neglect. Maybe he can bandage up his heart long enough to reach out to another.

"Yes," he says slowly, as if just coming to the realization himself. "I love her."

You nod. And if there is not much right with the world, at least this is. At least it's possible to love someone and have that second chance with them.

Marty Deeks almost lost his best friend yesterday.

Almost.

You reach down and squeeze his hand gently before turning back towards the parking lot. If you hurry, you can have your stuff packed by the weekend. You're ready for cool mountain air, or maybe the tall trees of the South. You've had enough of beaches to last you a lifetime, and are ready to let the dead rest in peace, without you carting them around in every memory you cannot let go of.

You can feel his eyes on you as you climb into your car.

When you look back, he is smiling.


End file.
